3 The Mac
After Apple II, the company went on to release the Apple III — which was not only almost four times the cost of its predecessor, but unfortunately turned out to be a colossal flop that took years for the company to recover from.
During that period of gloom in the early 1980s, however, Steve Jobs and his team were working on an entirely new Mac like the world had never seen before. And on January 22, 1984, during a prime-time Super Bowl XVIII commercial, Jobs unveiled The Mac with much fanfare.
Initially dubbed ‘Apple Macintosh’, The Mac offered users a revolutionary PC experience unavailable on other machines, including the Apple II. While its price was nearly double the Apple II’s at $2,495 a unit, The Mac boasted a number of inherently impressive features, including its advanced graphical user interface (GUI), its distinctive, beige design, and a color-matched keyboard and mouse to complete the package.
Unlike Apple II, The Mac was not expandable — but what ultimately set the machine apart was its blissful combination of aesthetics and performance, a theme that’s clearly stuck with Apple’s design team over the years.